Friday, November 30, 2012

This hits where it hurts. That mom could easily be me (except I am much older). She looks like me, she drives a minivan, she runs errands …at least I don't go to the salon, but is that really a good thing?

The creator of the webcomic xkcd, Randall Munroe, is one of the internet's favorite people. The "webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language" delivered plenty of each. Then it veered into medical science. Munroe explained that everything changed when his fiancé (now wife) was diagnosed with cancer. Along the way, the webcomic pointed out some powerful observations in dealing with the disease. This one in particular made it clear that the only indication of beating cancer is time. Today's comic announces that it has been two years since the diagnosis. Congratulations to the Munroes on this important milestone. Happy Biopsy-versary! (Thanks, Rojomoke!)

Improv Everywhere staged a shopping mob at one of Manhattan's 99 cent stores last week. A hundred agents got in line before the store opened, setting up tents to make it look as if they've been there for days, waiting for the Black Friday deals. Agent Cody Lindquist posed as an NBC reporter, interviewing shoppers. The store manager was confused but gracious, and most the items that were bought ended up being sent to various charities. Read more about the stunt at Improv Everywhere's site.

A blog friend of mine rescued an abandoned kitten and needs help. Maybe you can give the kitten a home, or help out with the vet bills.

The Most Amazing Bars in the World. Architecturally and aesthetically speaking, that is.

If there is any doubt about how nuts New Zealand has gone over the film The Hobbit, check out this elf doing a TV weather forecast. You won't understand him, he's speaking Sindarin, one of the Elvish languages of Middle Earth.

Before steroid use became common, body-building buffs were attractive
real-world hunks. Sean Connery put his body up against the best of them
in the Mr. Universe competition of 1953.

How to eat like an Oscar winner. Changing your body and image for a film is not easy, but the reward can look good on the mantle.

It appears that someone set up a camera to get a time-lapse of the tree growing. But a caterpillar stole the show! He almost got the right idea once, but then got back on his usual path. (via Arbroath)

I would like to draw your attention to a horrible epidemic of toy abuse. Teddy bears are being treated like objects in that we find ways to hurt, maim, and destroy them in the name of recycling, art, politics, or even entertainment. It’s not that Ursus teddius domesticus is an endangered species (quite the contrary), but do we have to treat them so badly? Let’s check out a few awful things that humans have done to teddies, in a list I posted at mental_floss.

At 1200 frames per second, the first minute of this video only covers one second of the cheetah's run! Greg Wilson shot high-speed footage of five cheetahs from the Cincinnati Zoo, including the world-speed-record-holder Sarah, over three days to get this video. They ran at up to 60 miles per hour, so I would imagine the most difficult part would be keeping the cat toy ahead of them. Read more about cheetahs at National Geographic. (via Metafilter)

The first Superman cartoon, from 1941. The Fleischer Studios cartoons from 1941 and 1942 are now in the public domain, and are posted at YouTube. You'll find the links, and more interesting stuff, at Metafilter.

With quite a few states offering petitions to secede from the union, the question arises on how strong the states would be was individual nations. What if they all seceded and then declared war on each other? (via Jason Kottke)

She’s funny, she channels emotions we all share but tend to hide, and she’s a cat. Is it any wonder that the internet loves Grumpy Cat? Learn how the Grumpy Cat meme came to be and how big it is now, in an article I posted at mental_floss.

Disney is developing a robot that can interact with visitors at its theme parks. Throw a ball, he catches it. If he doesn't catch it, he uses body language to acknowledge the fact. Throw more balls, and you can juggle with it. The unnamed robot is only in development now, and looks unnervingly like the Terminator. Those who think that Disney = Skynet have a little more ammunition for their theory. (via Daily of the Day)

"After 55 years, the final patrol for cases of the mysterious ‘laughing death’ in remote Papua New Guinea has returned from the highlands. From this pursuit came Nobel-winning science, clues to ‘mad cow’ and insights into Alzheimer’s disease. It also revealed a little bit of cannibal hidden in us all."

John Storms hasn't lived in Cedar Park, Texas, very long, but he and his family arrived with a splash, synching a huge Christmas light display to PSY's "Gangnam Style." The LED lights should only cost about $15 a month in electricity. "Gangnam Style" is not the only song the lights dance to. (via Stuff I Stole from the Internet)

Monday, November 26, 2012

There's a shortage of competent and sober bass guitar players, but this robotic bass guitar may put the few that are left out of business. James McVay put this together for his engineering honors project at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Witness it playing the Muse song "Hysteria." There's lots more about the machine at Hack A Day. (via Flavorwire)

Red pandas are the cutest little wild fur balls on earth. But if you startle one unexpectedly, you're treated to a few seconds of adorable comedy gold. This was recorded at the Maruyama Zoo in Hokkaido, Japan. (via The Daily What)

The PhantomX robot has been around for a while. This demo shows its activities running Phoenix code, and features children who are not nearly as afraid of this creepy crawly thing as they should be. now imagine this machine covered in battle armor with guns mounted above and below. Then imagine it covered in fur on toy shelves for Christmas. I'm not sure which is scarier!

They always told you, keep your professional life and your personal life separate. In some professions, that should be a no-brainer. This video is part of a web series called Teachers. (via Unique Daily)

As contestants on a game show that has video producers competing against each other, the team of Travis Kurtz and Matin Atrushi had 72 hours to make a funny video, and they got it finished in time!

We made this video for a TV show called "Viral Video Showdown" on SyFy Channel (Episode "Such a Cliche"). We had 72 hours to come up with an idea based on: 1.) action 2.) a cliche and 3.) the idiom "Between a rock and a hard place" and then write, shoot, edit and deliver a final product. We hope you enjoy it.

The episode featuring the making of this video will air this Tuesday. (Thanks, Travis!)

If you never watched the erstwhile TV show House MD, you can catch up watching this compilation of clips from all 177 episodes. Well, you'd have to add some arguments about lupus to be really complete, but this will give you an idea of whether you should watch the DVDs. (via Metafilter)

Friday, November 23, 2012

Africans are banding together to help their brothers and sisters in Norway. The goal is to send radiators to those poor cold Norwegians, and spread the warmth of global brotherhood. The theme song is performed by an all-star group called Africa for Norway. (via Everlasting Blort)

It was a lovely idea. A crowd of children were waiting for Father Christmas to arrive at the Broad Street Mall in Reading, England. Santa Claus, played by Steve Chessell of the 11th Battalion Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, lowered himself into the shopping center's atrium by rope -but was stopped by his beard getting caught in the rope's rappelling mechanism! (via Fark)

The turkeys' first dub step video http://www.neatorama.com/2012/05/19/turkey-dubstep/ from a few months ago has 2.5 million views, so they were under pressure to give their audience more. I think it went to their heads. See more turkey cartoons for your Thanksgiving enjoyment.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Billy is demonstrating different ways to behave at the dinner table. Billy needs therapy, or at least constant supervision. This video contains language that may be deemed a bit rude in the workplace. (via Buzzfeed)

There are around a half-million words in the full Oxford English
Dictionary, though most people use only a few thousand in everyday
communication. Randall Munroe of xkcd explains the Saturn V rocket using
only the 1,000 most commonly-used English words. This comic grew out of
Munroe's journeys into Simple English Wikipedia. You can see another example here. If you want a taste of how difficult it is to explain things using only the thousand most common words, The Up Goer Five Text Editor
will point out any words you use that are too uncommon. However, if you
are going to explain something to children or people who are learning
English as a second language, the simpler the better. What you see here is just a small portion of the rocket: see the entire panel at xkcd. (via Metafilter)

The guys from Epic Meal Time put together a Thanksgiving feast featuring a pig stuffed with a turkey (from chef Zadi), brown goo, and a fast-food lasagna. And then they served it at Someone Cares Soup Kitchen. Warning: NSFW language. (via reddit)

In the game Furiosity, the object is apparently to turn all the blocks into a different color. It only begins to get difficult about level four, and then it gets very difficult for further levels. (via the Presurfer)

From the folks who brought you Rebecca Black and her song "Friday," here's Nicole Westbrook singing about Thanksgiving. The song sounds like it came out of a mad-lib pop song generator and ultimately makes no sense at all.

Holidays, especially traditional family holidays, come loaded with many decisions to make. Luckily, flowcharts give us a geeky shortcut to making those decisions. Here are eight that pertain specifically to how you handle Thanksgiving, in a list I posted at mental_floss.

The Hans Brinker Budget Hotel in Amsterdam is a $22-a-night hostel that fills up every night, possibly due to its strange advertising strategy. The website admits that its accommodation are not luxurious, or even satisfactory. (via the Presurfer)